Recasting the gallery as a set for dramatic scenes, FADE IN: INT. ART GALLERY – DAY explores the role that art plays in narrative film and television. FADE IN features the work of 25 artists and considers a history of art as seen in classic movies, soap operas, science fiction, pornography and musicals. These works have been sourced, reproduced and created in response to artworks that have been made to appear on-screen, whether as props, set dressings, plot devices, or character cues.

The nature of the exhibition is such that sculptures, paintings and installations transition from prop to image to art object, staging an enquiry into whether these fictional depictions in mass media ultimately have greater influence in defining a collective understanding of art than art itself does. Certain preoccupations with artworks are established early on in cinematic history: the preciousness of art objects anchors their roles as plot drivers, and anxieties intensify regarding the vitality of artworks and their perceived abilities to wield power over viewers or to capture spirits. Such themes were famously explored in the 1945 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, from which Cindy Sherman has sourced the original portrait painted for the production. Across genres, the character of the artist is habitually portrayed as a volatile, mercurial figure with license to subvert societal norms, who is thereby ridiculed, feared and revered. From many such narratives, FADE IN draws out the art objects, granting them the status only previously achieved on-screen, whilst pointing to moments in which one form of media wrangles with the power of another.

Danai Anesiadou, Vesica Piscis: Down with all States. Down with all Churches. Long live this Painter, 2016. Mixed media. Courtesy of the artist

FADE IN: INT. ART GALLERY – DAY, installation view

Brice Dellsperger, Background for Body Double 36, After Xanadu (1980), 2016. Acrylic wall painting by Zone90Graphics. Courtesy of Air de Paris, Paris and Team Gallery, New York

FADE IN: INT. ART GALLERY – DAY, installation view

GALA Committee, In the Name of the Place, 1995-1997 (continuing through syndication), installation detail. Props inserted on the set of Melrose Place in collaboration with students, artists, critics, set decorators, producers

GALA Committee, In the Name of the Place, 1995-1997 (continuing through syndication), installation detail. Props inserted on the set of Melrose Place in collaboration with students, artists, critics, set decorators, producers